


Here, Here, My Family (You Are My Familiar)

by stardustedknuckles



Series: The Hunter's Moon is Shining [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Beau-Centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Werewolf AU, references to past abuse (minor)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27719417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: They're talking in the living room one night, Beau and Yasha, and Jester. It's been five months since Obann, since Yasha came to stay. It comes out that when Beau fled from her home and found her way to the city - to Caleb, to Jester, to the library - she left everything behind. She's made her peace with that.Jester and Yasha have other ideas.Or: the one where everyone meets the Lionetts, but it's a modern/werewolf AU and Beau's in a bit of a better place.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & The Mighty Nein, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Series: The Hunter's Moon is Shining [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017664
Comments: 9
Kudos: 131





	Here, Here, My Family (You Are My Familiar)

**Author's Note:**

> Gods this was fun. I've been writing for six hours, and this didn't exist before those hours. Eternal thanks to ethereal_bear as always for letting me fire ideas at her until they make sense.

"So you guys really didn't have beds?" Beau twists up a little to get a better look at Yasha's face. They're sitting on the couch, chatting with Jester while she works on her sketchbook and sipping drinks.

"We didn't really need them," Yasha says. She pushes a strand of Beau's hair away from her face absentmindedly. "We might sleep as humans in the warmer months to cool off, but we slept on furs or on the stone of the cave if it was still too warm." She makes a face. "I never liked summer. Too hot to sleep in a pile, too weird to sleep without touching anyone else."

Jester plucks a cracker from the plate and grins. "Aw, you guys snuggled."

A slow, fond grin stretches across Yasha's face. "Oh certainly. It's always been my preferred way to sleep."

There's a moment where Beau knows they're all thinking about the two years Yasha spent forced to sleep alone in a cage, then Beau says, "I didn't think I liked it, but you've grown on me." She reaches up to poke Yasha's cheek gently. "Until you start chasing rabbits in your sleep."

Yasha bites halfheartedly at her finger. "What can I say? You make a good rabbit."

Jester gasps a little and they both look over. "Snugglebunny," she says in wonder, and whatever face Beau makes at that has Yasha laughing outright.

"Am not," Beau growls, face flushing in a way she knows both of them can see. She can't find it within herself to mind. "You're the snugglebunny," she says to Jester, and she can cross that off the list of words she would never expect to hear from her own mouth. "You sleep with an actual stuffed rabbit."

"And?" says Jester. "Mr. Paint is the _softest_. Didn't you ever sleep with a stuffed animal?"

Beau hesitates. "I did, yeah. Til I was about sixteen." The memory of what she lost when she took off two years ago still carries an echo of an ache, but time and therapy have sanded off all the edges and it's mostly fondness.

"Beau! What was it?" Jester leans forward eagerly, and Yasha is watching her with a gleam of amusement.

Beau waves a hand. "It was just an old dog I got for Christmas as a kid," she says. "He was like a blue…tartan kind of pattern? Looked like the material of one of my dad's jackets - you know the ones people wear when they wanna be fancy, with the elbows made of another material?" She shrugs. "Called him Patches. Slept with him for ten solid years."

"Why'd you stop?" Beau blinks up in surprise at Yasha. She's watching Beau with that open curiosity, the kind that makes Beau feel like she's the only thing that matters to her and makes her stomach do funny things even after five months.

"Got too old for sleeping with toys," she says. "Mom put him in storage."

Jester looks horrified. "You're never too old to sleep with stuffed animals," she protests.

"I agree with you now," Beau says. "But at sixteen, I mean. S'a weird age, and I was still trying to be the kid my parents wanted me to be - for a while longer anyway."

Yasha's hand squeezes her gently where it's been running up and down her upper arm. "You said you ran away from them, before?"

Beau takes a deep breath, acutely aware of Jester's eyes on her now, no trace of a smile. They're steering quickly into difficult territory, but between the snow falling gently outside and the hot toddy, Beau doesn't feel terribly unsteady yet. "Yeah," she says on the exhale, keeping her voice bright. "Big fight. Dad had me working in the shop to try and straighten me out, I had a whole party drug ring thing going because fuck him, got caught, thrown in jail - bad for business, you know?" Yasha's looking at her in a way Beau can't read quite yet, so she hurries through. "Figured best to blow town, packed a backpack and took a bus here. Met Jester. All good."

Yasha's face is still hard to read, but there's a deep concern in her voice. "You were…in jail?"

Beau gives Yasha her best mischievous grin. "Did you think the bad boy charm was an act?"

"She was in jail because her dad told the judge to scare her," Jester says darkly. "It was a first-time offense. She shouldn't have gone anywhere."

Beau frowns at her. "Aw c'mon, Jes. Let me at least pretend I can be cool." Because that's the only way she can rebrand that terror, the handcuffs and the dehumanization and the _not knowing._ On bad nights, she still has dreams she's sitting trapped and helpless in her cell, numb with panic in clothes that aren't hers.

Yeah. Cool.

Jester's own frown doesn't budge, but there's a little less of an edge to her voice. "I think Yasha knows by now what she's signed on for."

Speaking of Yasha, she hasn't moved since the explanation. Beau looks up to check on her and startles to find Yasha visibly struggling to keep her composure.

"Yash?"

She looks slowly to Beau. "He…put you there?" Her voice is dangerously soft.

Beau sits up all the way and pulls Yasha's hand from around her shoulder to hold it. "It's fine," she says. "I mean it's _bullshit_ and he sucks, but I don't have to think about him anymore." She rubs her thumb along the back of Yasha's hand. "What's got you worked up?"

Yasha's eyes are on hers, but it's not quite Beau she's looking at yet. "You were in a _cage_."

Oh.

Beau wants to play it off, tell Yasha it didn't affect her that much. But even if Jester weren't sitting right there to call her bluff - and it would be a fair amount of bluff to call - she's already hesitated too long to be convincing when she looks away and says, "for like a week."

Yasha's voice is ice cold. "He left you there for seven days?" Beau's not sure why, but something about the rage simmering under Yasha is making her choke up a little. Yasha spent _two years_ under the thumb of someone who made her do horrible things on the regular, and the ferocity on her face is every bit as sharp as it had been when she'd read for herself Obann's account of what had happened with Zuala.

It's making Beau feel very small suddenly, that Yasha should be this angry over something this comparatively minor. Not the helpless kind of small she's used to - the way Yasha looks ready to kill for her feels like power given to her, not taken away. She smiles weakly. "That's why I don't go home for the holidays."

Yasha's expression cracks from fury to grief, and she tugs Beau into her lap to wrap her shaking arms around her. "I'm not going to shift," she says with quiet resolution.

Beau reaches up to touch her hair. "It's okay if you do."

Yasha's arms tighten. "No. I can't do this with paws - hold you like this."

Beau's laugh comes out shaky as she rests her head on Yasha's shoulder. "No complaints," she manages. Beau thinks she's never been as grateful as she is right now for all the work she's done over the last two years - for every step she took that would teach her how to sit here on the lap of someone like Yasha and let this happen. For being taught that comfort itself didn't have to be earned.

Comfort might not have to be a luxury, but Yasha's arms wrapped tight around her like this feel like a gift.

"Beau," Jester says from behind her, "did you leave a bunch of other stuff there with them?"

Beau shifts just enough to be able to spot Jester and keep her position. "Well yeah, I guess…they'd probably claim ownership of most of it because they bought it, though."

Jester's face is grim. "No. It's yours. Do you think your dad feels bad at all for what happened?"

She shrugs a little. "He texted a few times after I left, before I changed my number. Never a sorry, just a lot of shit about how they would like to know I'm not dead in a ditch."

One of Yasha's hands moves from Beau's ribs to run up and down her spine through her shirt, and gods does that feel good. "No thanks to him," she says. Her voice sounds less strained, her arms steadier now.

"Yeah," says Beau. "I sent back 'I'm fine' while standing in the shop with the service tech and had a new number like a minute later."

Jester nods thoughtfully - which on her never looks anything short of devilish. "We can work with that."

Beau smiles and pulls back to kiss Yasha gently on the lips and reposition so that her arms are still around Beau, but her angle is better and she's comfortable enough to stay this way for hours. "They live three hours away, Jes," she says. "It's not worth all of this. With your help and getting on at the library…I'm doing really good."

"You can't buy another Patches," Jester says indignantly. "And we're not going to them. They're the ones who fucked up. They can bring your things to you."

Yasha hums in agreement as Beau looks between the two of them. It's true that it's unlikely they've thrown any of her stuff out. She can't imagine them leaving her room the way it was for long, though, which means it's probably already packed up and ready to be brought over. "You sure you want him knowing where we are?" she asks.

Jester scoffs. "He's a dick, not a comic book villain. Besides." She lifts her chin at Yasha, who drops a kiss on Beau's head. "Yasha would eat him."

Beau looks up at Yasha to check her reaction, knows she works hard not to beat herself up for the things that went on under Obann's control. Yasha's expression is perfectly neutral. "I'll bet he's stringy, but I'm certain I've had worse."

Beau buries her face into Yasha's chest and grins, feeling overwhelmed suddenly. "Yeah okay," she says. "But maybe we have Fjord send the message?"

Jester looks unimpressed. "Veth would be more fun."

"I'm not so sure," Yasha muses. "I could be a lot of fun."

As Beau chuckles into Yasha's shirt, Jester gets to her feet and plucks her mug off the coffee table. "I want more hot chocolate," she announces.

"I want to make another one of those drinks," Yasha says, sitting up. Beau makes a disgruntled noise as Yasha extricates herself, and Yasha pats her cheek playfully before leaving it there for a moment. "I'll bring back one for both of us, don't worry."

Beau glares at her in mock disapproval. "Fine, but I want fur after."

Yasha leans over to kiss her on the forehead. "I have plenty to go around."

Snow drifts gently outside the sliding glass window ethereal and silent in contrast to the warmth of the mundane within. Except it's not mundane, not one second of it. Forget wolf forms and living paint - the sight of Yasha carefully measuring whiskey into a shot glass where Beau would dump it in without looking is spellbinding, the way Jester pops a candy cane in her mouth to suck while her milk warms in the saucepan its own kind of magic. That she's here at all to see them, part of the family she's made for herself…it would be as unthinkable to her ten years ago as time travel once looked to wizards.

Beau falls asleep after the second drink, halfway through the Golden Girls episode they were watching on Fjord's Hulu. She'd closed her eyes on flannel and warm skin, but when she stirs just once hours later it's to find herself on the floor and surrounded by fur and deep breathing. Dimly, she can hear Jester's light snoring on the other side of Yasha's back and smiles, falling back into sleep with a deep contentment washing through her bones.

And the magic of that feeling will never fade.

* * *

...but it makes a convincing effort to fade when Beau's standing three days later at the front window of the apartment and looking anxiously out at the driveway. She feels vaguely sick, like her parents are going to show up and she'll open her mouth to find she hasn't actually grown at all and she still wants their approval.

She feels Yasha come up behind her, leans back against her chest a little stiffly as those powerful arms come to wrap around her waist. Yasha's chin finds its spot on the crown of Beau's head, and slowly her muscles relax.

"We're right here," Yasha murmurs.

Beau nods gratefully and flicks a glance at the living room. Jester and Fjord are perched on opposite ends of the couch but leaning slightly towards one another, and all seven feet of Caduceus sprawls in the soft chair that holds two. He catches her eye and gives her a small wave, smiling.

Beau smiles back less convincingly and turns back to the window just in time to catch the glint of sunlight on metal at the bend in the driveway. "They're here." Her voice is hoarse, but the other three hear her anyway and get to their feet as Beau grasps the doorknob with a shaky hand and pulls it open.

It's ridiculous to think that her friends would take in the shiny SUV and the polished exteriors of her mother and father and decide suddenly that actually, Beau had been in the wrong, but her stomach feels like that's a real possibility as they step off the small porch and approach. She sees her mom first, full face of makeup and dressed in a way casual only to her. She'd worn closed-toe shoes - that's about as dressed down as she's ever gone, even for a three-hour car ride. "Beauregard," she says. The hug her mother gives her is tentative but un-rushed, the uncertainty in her expression mostly overtaken by a genuine curiosity when she pulls back to take in the group behind her and the house beyond.

"Hi, Mom," she manages, and then she spots her dad coming from the other side and isn't sure at all how to react.

She hasn't seen him since the night he called the cops - her last image of his face is the mask of fury he'd worn when he slapped her, right after the handcuffs were on. Her mother had picked her up after that hellish week, and Beau been gone long before he came home that evening.

It's hard to recall him capable of that much vindictiveness, this handsome and charming man in tailored clothes and nice shoes. But not that hard.

"Hey dad."

He looks like he might try to come in for a hug too, and Beau knows with sudden certainty that if he does she won't be able to prevent an automatic step backwards. But his eyes move very quickly behind Beau and he offers a wave instead. "Lovely drive," he says. "Had to put the seat down in the back, but I think TJ did just fine in his carseat." He smiles awkwardly. "He'll be glad for the space on the way back."

"Yeah, of course," says Beau, because that's how he asks for things like "can we unload the car now." Never forthright, never in a way that could make him seem demanding. Never in a way that could end in a "no." 

He gets one anyway.

"It's lovely to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Lionett." Beau feels the air shift alongside her as Fjord steps forward and reaches to shake the hand of the both of them. "Thank you for coming out to deliver Beau's things."

Beau savors the looks they try to hide as they take in Fjord, with his tusks and his salt-and-pepper hair and the vaguely athletic look he manages to give off in spite of everything.

"I'm Fjord," he continues, undeterred. "We spoke on the phone. Beau here is a friend of mine from the gym." It's not technically untrue, but the smile Beau has to suppress surprises and pleases her. Her father starts to turn back to the car as Caduceus steps forward, seven feet of placidly smiling firbolg - which Beau's willing to guess is entirely new to them.

"Caduceus Clay," he says warmly, and the way her father's hand disappears inside of that big furry paw makes Beau as glad as it makes her dad nervous.

"Thoreau," he says finally, and gestures. "And my wife, Clara."

"Delightful." Caduceus's voice leaves no room for any other assumption. "Our blue friend here is Jester, and - oh, yep, that's Yasha."

Beau turns at the shift in Caduceus's voice and now she does smile when she finds the source of it. Where Yasha had been moments before was a large white wolf with unsettling mismatched eyes. Beau suddenly understands exactly what must've deterred her father from stepping in to touch her, and her heart squeezes. 

"Don't worry," Jester says, grinning from Yasha to Beau's parents. "She's super trained. Watch! Yasha, shake." Yasha waits for one weighty second, then one more just to make a point before lifting a foot without making any move closer. Thoreau looks deeply uncertain now, but Beau nods stoically and he edges forward to gently grasp Yasha's massive white paw, damp and dirty with snowmelt.

"Hi," he says awkwardly. Beau reaches over and rubs at Yasha's head to get her to play growl and put her arm in her mouth. Thoreau jumps away and withdraws a handkerchief to wipe his hand in what Beau's sure he thinks is a surreptitious way.

"See," says Jester. "She loves Beau soooo much."

Thoreau smiles thinly. "I see, yes. We uh, have that in common then, Yasha." Beau can't do anything about the way her hand freezes in Yasha's fur, but she recovers quickly at Yasha's gentle headbutt against her ribs and jerks her head to the car.

"Pop the trunk for us so we can get out of your hair?"

"Yes," he agrees quickly, turning. He catches himself. "But not before we carry this in and see your lovely home."

"It's pretty nice," Beau agrees easily. Fjord and Caduceus follow behind her, and spaced out in that way they start to heft boxes from the back of the car and pass them down the line to Jester. Beau pulls open the side door and notes the reupholstering over the spot she'd carved her name on the inside. No room for imperfection, not even for a ten-year-old car. She smiles up at the soft, dark eyes staring at her from under dark hair in the booster seat and waves. "Hi, TJ!"

He's young enough that he still waves like his fist is blinking and old enough to say "hey!" while he does it.

"I heard someone had a birthday recently, am I right?" He grins and nods, probably expecting Beau to give him something.

Which she does, because obviously. She'd bought a GameBoy Advance off eBay a year ago in a fit of nostalgia - the lit version that opened and shut. She slid it from her pocket and gave it to him, smiling when his eyes lit up just as brightly. "And this," she said, sliding a small box next to the seat, "has more games and the charger. Don't stay up too late playing, okay?" TJ nodded absently, turning the machine over and finding the on switch with the nigh-uncanny proficiency that came from growing up with technology like that everywhere.

Her dad's voice is strained. "What do you say?"

TJ's head snaps up. "Thank you!"

Beau winks at him and grabs the box off the back of the lowered seat next to him. "You got it, buddy."

He looks past her suddenly and points, eyes going wide. "You have a dog?!"

If Yasha's that close, Thoreau must have moved away, so she's trying not to snicker when she looks back to find Yasha's head pushing inside the door to get a good look at TJ. They regard each other for a moment, and then Yasha's mouth drops open in a happy pant and TJ leans forward as hard as he can to reach and touch that great nose. He shrieks laughing when Yasha snuffles against his palm and licks his cheek before Beau makes a big show of trying to unpin herself from halfway under her with a "go on, you big ol' lump" that earns her a lick of her own.

They finally tumble out of the car and Beau waves breathlessly at her brother, noting with satisfaction the hairs sticking to her hoodie and to the seating. "Good to see you, little man," she says, and he waves as she shuts the door and carries her box to the house, Yasha at her heels.

Her parents don't stay long, and Beau counts it a soft win that her parents don't notice the dildos Jester had somehow found time to stash in random places - when the hell...? She'd done a sweep five minutes beforehand. She spots Fjord palming an especially egregious tiefling dick from the mantle over the TV and privately thinks the human-shaped one on the spice rack would've been a better dive, but she's grateful nonetheless.

Hell, maybe they have noticed and that's why they don't look keen to linger.

But she's pretty sure when she thinks about it later that it has more to do with the air shimmer she catches behind her parents' backs as they come inside, followed by a human Yasha in her usual glamour of flannel and ripped black jeans. "Looks like I almost missed the party," she comments lightly, face giving nothing away when Beau's mom startles badly and puts a hand to her chest. She nods to Beau's parents and moves easily to the kitchen to tip Beau's chin up and kiss her softly just once as she's edging toward the spice rack.

Beau flushes harder than she thought possible, mostly because she's more _pleased_ than she thought possible. "Hey, Y-yyyou," she stammers, managing to keep from naming her girlfriend as her dog, and Yasha grins unrepentantly. "You're just in time, actually." Beau is actually going to pass out trying to process all of this, she just knows it.

"Perfect," says Yasha. She turns to Thoreau and Clara. "Thank you very much for coming," she says in an echo of Fjord's words. "I know Beau is glad to have her things back. Would you like a glass of water for the road?"

Beau has to turn away now or she's going to start giggling - in the other room, she can see Jester's shoulders shaking silently behind Caduceus's broad back. None of this has ever seemed like it could be remotely funny, not once, not before these people came into her life, and now the absurdity of the whole affair makes her chest feel ready to burst.

"Oh no, thank you," her mom says with too much sincerity. "We've got reservations for brunch in town, so we're going to go ahead and hit the road to make a day of it."

Yasha looks at Beau, fully ready to ask her where around here takes lunch reservations, and Beau only just manages to look serious enough to stop her. "Have fun," she says to her parents. "It's a big place with lots to do. You've got my new number if you need me?" It was her phone Fjord had used to call them, and they nodded mutely. "Awesome," says Beau, and she steps forward and hugs each of them briefly before Fjord reaches behind him to open the door and nod courteously to them on the way out.

"Mind the ice on some of the back roads," he says.

"We will, thank you," says her mom, and then they're climbing in the car and Fjord shuts the door. They all wait for the car to three-point turn and start back up the driveway, and then Jester cracks entirely.

"Oh my gods, Beau! Did you see their faces?"

Beau feels a little lightheaded, not entirely certain how to make the events of the last half an hour start to make sense.

"Beauregard," comes a familiar voice from behind the couch. Caleb's face materializes a moment later, and he holds up a poster. "A favored band of yours?"

That snaps Beau out of it, and she launches herself across the living room to try and snatch it. She trips over Veth, which she probably should have predicted, and is laughing when she reaches him and pulls it away with a "fuck you, Caleb - when did you guys even get here?"

It's Veth who answers, grinning widely. "We've been here the whole time," she says, waving her hands mysteriously.

"I heard Caleb fall through the window to my room about five minutes ago," says Jester.

"Snitch."

"Okay, okay,." Beau's laughing a little now. "We're taking all of this to the new house in a couple of weeks, so don't go crazy. There's gotta be a specific box - of course they're labeled." She drops her hand from the box labeled media. "Anyone got one that says 'notebooks?'"

"I would not have bothered with the poster in that case," Caleb says drily.

Caduceus pipes up. "I've got it."

Beau high-steps over everything to get to him and takes the solid weight of the box on her outstretched arms. "Thanks, man. This one goes in the room, and the rest can get stacked off in the basement area."

"Pizza will be here in ten," Fjord notes, checking his phone.

"Perfect," says Beau. "Be right back."

Beau pauses a moment to run her hand over the top of the box when she sets it on the bed. The tape on it is brittle, and taken with the general lack of sharpness in the boxes themselves, she knows she was right to guess that it had been packed up almost immediately after her departure. This one's densely packed, jammed almost to bulging with composition books and colored hardback kid's journals - she hasn’t even opened it yet, but she can picture exactly what it'll look like. So many years of pencil lead and gel pen and gods know how many handwriting changes - a habit she picked up to amuse herself in classes that had wound up serving various uses later. In a way, it feels like her entire younger self is here in this box, waiting to talk to her.

The worst of it is that all those messages in there had never been meant for anyone but them. She wonders if they flipped through any of them while they packed, can vaguely picture her mother pausing to pore over a page here and there - even if only to mourn the child she should've been.

Beau blows out a breath and pats the top of the box once. Time for all of that later. Maybe tonight, she can curl up on the bed with Yasha and some wine, introduce her to a version of herself both long gone and ever-present.

She hears Yasha in the door behind her and closes her eyes as she's pulled close again and kissed gently on the temple.

"Okay?" Yasha asks.

Beau grasps Yasha's arms around her, squeezes. "More than," she says. "Thank you."

Yasha releases her just enough that she can turn and kiss her fully this time, and Beau giggles when she runs her hands along Yasha's ribs and hips, feeling nothing where her eyes told her there were clothes a moment ago. "This is the best invention in the world," she says. "I can't believe you were standing there intimidating my parents while naked under your fake clothes."

Yasha shrugs a little. "I think it would have been more intimidating without the glamor, personally, but that might be a bit of ah…overkill."

"Definitely." Beau dips her head to kiss just above one of Yasha's breasts. "But their loss." She smiles and lets Yasha pull her close and they spend a moment together in the bedroom just embracing and listening to their family move and bicker good-naturedly down the hall.

After a long moment, Beau pulls back and presses a kiss to Yasha's cheek. "Ready to go back out?"

Yasha's reply is interrupted by Veth from the direction of the basement: "What kind of weird-ass dog -?"

And Jester: "Beau! We found Patches!"

Beau and Yasha share a glance.

"I see 'waiting to unpack' is going great," Yasha says.

"Yeah," says Beau, smiling. "Saw that coming." She takes Yasha's hand. "Let's go."

**Author's Note:**

> TJ 100% saw Yasha go from wolf to human, and that was definitely on purpose on her part. She probably winked at him too, finger to lips.


End file.
